An article on the Verge last week got me thinking. “Bring back the dumb TV” argues that the apps in TVs will always be worse than the experiences you’ll have using external devices that plug into a TV, and that the optimal TV is just a collection of inputs.
And… yeah, I can see the point. When I look at the apps I use in my TV, there’s the painful Amazon app, the painful YouTube app, and the completely adequate Netflix app.
One huge problem is the lack of keyboard. Typing by using a d-pad to navigate around a QWERTY keyboard on the screen is a bad, bad experience. From that perspective, the YouTube app got a whole lot better once I connected it to my iPhone and iPad, and used those devices to select videos.
If I could do that with Amazon, it would get a whole lot better, but the pain points in the Amazon app—all of their complete misjudgments about how people would watch TV shows—is a whole other blog post.
Then I consider the Netflix app. It doesn’t wow me, but it works okay and most importantly, it has been noticeably updated during the time I’ve had the TV. If apps that are installed on my TV can improve, then there’s no excuse for not improving them.
To get, at last, to the point of that Verge article: IÂ like not having a bunch of stuff plugged into my TV. I don’t want to keep buying new stuff and accumulating more devices. Planned obsolescence is deeply uncomfortable. I like being able to use the same remote control to operate my TV and all of the services I use to watch content on the TV (although if I already have the iPhone, it’s nice to use that, too).
On the other hand, while software can be upgraded, the hardware is not getting any newer. Theoretically, there could come a day when my TV is not up to the task of using things like Amazon or Netflix. Also, to the best of my knowledge, I can’t go out an install new apps for new services. When the Amazon/Netflix/Hulu-killer comes out, I’m kind of out of luck.
It’s hard to say what I’ll want some number of years in the hypothetical future. For now, though, I’m pretty satisfied with my smart TV, all things considered.